Chapter 9 - The Lion’s Trap
Three days later, Gabriel set the trap.
He leaked false intelligence through a compromised lieutenant in his outer ring: *Gabriel DeLuca was moving his daughter and her interpreter to a private clinic in Northfield for an emergency auditory procedure.*
The decoy convoy consisted of two armored Suburbans traveling along the secluded, wooded stretches of Forest Preserve Drive under the gray canopy of a late winter afternoon.
Lorenzo Moretti took the bait.
Three heavy pickup trucks equipped with steel push-bars rammed the lead Suburban off the road, sending it spinning into a ditch. Armed men in tactical masks leaped from the trucks, surrounding the second vehicle with shotguns and automatic rifles.
Lorenzo himself stepped out of the center truck, a heavy chrome revolver in his hand, a triumphant grin splitting his face.
“Get the girl out!” Lorenzo bellowed, kicking the driver’s side door. “Bring me the little deaf bitch and her trust bonds!”
The rear doors of the Suburban didn't open.
Instead, the tinted side windows rolled down half an inch, and smoke canisters deployed with a sharp hiss, enveloping the clearing in a wall of blinding white phosphorus smoke.
From the tree line, the real ambush sprung.
Gabriel hadn’t put Sophie or me in that convoy. We were three miles away, sitting safely in the monitoring room of the estate’s outer bunker, watching the entire operation through high-definition drone cameras.
On the screen, Gabriel’s elite tactical operators emerged from the snow-covered forest like ghosts. Within forty-five seconds, Lorenzo Moretti’s strike team was completely dismantled. The gunfire was precise, lethal, and overwhelming.
Lorenzo was disarmed, tackled into the freezing mud, and pinned down by Daniel’s boot on his neck.
Gabriel stepped out of the trees, holding an automatic shotgun at his side, looking like an ancient warlord surveying the ruins of an invading army.
He didn't execute Lorenzo on the spot.
Instead, he knelt beside the thrashing mobster, grabbed him by the hair, and forced his face into the mud.
Through the drone’s audio feed, Gabriel’s words came through crystal clear over the speakers in our room:
“The Commission will hold its trial tomorrow morning, Lorenzo,” Gabriel said coldly. “You will sign a full confession regarding the murder of your father, whom you poisoned to take his seat. You will relinquish all claims against the DeLuca estate, and you will spend the rest of your pathetic life in a maximum-security federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.”
Gabriel leaned down closer.
“If you ever speak my daughter’s name again, even in your prayers, I will ensure that every sunrise you see in that cell is your last.”
He stood up, turned his back on the broken mobster, and walked back toward his vehicle without looking back once.
Beside me in the bunker, Sophie let out a long, shuddering breath.
She turned to me, her hazel eyes luminous, and signed three words that made my heart swell until it felt like it would burst:
*“The wolves are gone.”*
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“Yes, baby,” I whispered aloud, signing the words with steady, joyous hands. *“The wolves are gone for good.”*
***
